


In the Absence of Light

by OpensUp4Nobody



Series: Odd Unrelated Mini-fics [5]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, M/M, Maybe it's sad? I dont know, i guess? idk it's just weird rambly nonsense, this prob isnt substancial enough to tag as enjoltaire but why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:27:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpensUp4Nobody/pseuds/OpensUp4Nobody
Summary: The fallout of Enjolras opening an interdimensional rift and damning the universe.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Series: Odd Unrelated Mini-fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1259042
Kudos: 9





	In the Absence of Light

Enjolras is a flickering flame in a room that's on fire.   
  
Dark eyes stick to the image, pinned to the sight. Grantaire finds the idea of looking away unfathomable. Impossible. There are no other sights to see. The universe is narrowing to a point, contracting as the light is sliding away. The flames are dimming. He must witness this tragedy while there's still contrast to the creeping darkness. Cling to that small thread of warmth while it’s still there.   
  
And of course it's come to this. How could it not? The shattered pieces of a broken image have been pulled together into something inevitable. Grotesque. But everything makes sense.   
  
Grantaire's eyes sting from straining and his body aches with a ribboning pain. It radiates outward from somewhere internal, somewhere untouched but irreparably broken.   
  
He understands. In an ineffable way he understands, although nothing makes sense and it's making less sense by the minute.   
  
Stupidity. That is what brought them here. Incomprehensible stupidity. Or maybe arrogance would be a better descriptor. Or desperation. Only a desperate person could do something so stupid. Only someone with an ego unchecked could strive for something so... so impossibly huge. The word is to small to capture the gravity of what has happened. What is happening. Or perhaps it was more down to blind faith in a universe of goodness and order. Triumph of good over evil. But this isn't good and it isn't evil. It just is. And it is turning everything cold in an absence of heat.   
  
Enjolras needed something to give and now it's given. Everything's given. All is crumbling away. Mission accomplished. Congratulations.   
  
Enjolras himself would probably disagree with that assessment. The thought almost brings the words to his lips, hoping as always to see bubbles of anger flicker across that beautiful face. Grantaire holds back his hysterical laugh, his tongue stilled by the echoes of blood on stone. It drips from the blonde’s throat. Still more waterfall than trickle. How long has that river been running? The seconds have stretched to eternity, life suddenly seen through a filter of fixative, trying desperately to glue him in place.   
  
He pulls his eyes away, set free as Enjolras is dimming out of focus. His attention turning to the center of the room, not on the other seven broken bodies.   
  
The anomaly has gone but there is a heaviness weighting the air. He can still hear the whispering threat, the tearing of the intangible, the magnitude of what's been done. Still. From the moment the tear opened, it never left. Skipping from dread to abject horror with no buffer, no transition. And then the wind snuffed out seven candles... eight candles. And left Grantaire alone in a rising tide of darkness.   
  
Grantaire pulls a matchbox from his pocket, hands moving of their own accord. The room is now so dark he can't observe his own actions. Maybe that’s okay. He isn't sure he wants to look anymore. At all. Period.   
  
He lights a match and the sudden light is so sharp it pains his still stinging eyes. Consciously, unstartled, he lets the splinter of a match fall away from his fingertips. The brightness feels wrong. The wood burns out on the stone floor but Grantaire is consumed in flames, they rise up from under his skin. A candle with no wick. A burning ball of wax. The physical pain has fallen away as his bleeding soul burns outward. It doesn't hurt, but it aches impossibly with its wretchedness.   
  
Lowering himself, Grantaire sits on the floor, head tilted skyward toward the pin prickles of light that only just register in his mind as the implication of a window.  
  
He smiles through his cocoon of intangible flames, waiting for the stars to slowly blink out.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks.


End file.
